Wreck of the S.L. Dowell

The S.L. Dowell is a forty five foot long, wood hulled,
steam tug that was built in Friday Harbor in 1899. The boat
was originally named the Griffin and worked most of its life
hauling coal from the South end of Lake Washington to Mercer
Island and Kirkland. In 1912, the owner (S.L. Dowell)
re-powered the Griffin with a 50-horsepower Corliss steam
engine and re-modeled the decks and wheelhouse before
putting the tug back to work on the lake renamed the “S.L.
Dowell”.

The tug worked hard, hauling long rafts of barges
that were loaded with coal cars or gravel. In October
of 1922, Captain George Wahl was at the wheel when the
tug hit a snag off of Mercer Island and sank rapidly.
The good captain and his engineer (William Holslar) were
barely able to leap to the safety of the gravel scow
they were towing and thus escaped drowning by a hair's
breadth.

Today the S.L. Dowell rests in two hundred feet of
cold, dark water about a mile south of the 520 bridge in
Lake Washington. The tug sits upright on the bottom, in
pristine condition, with the name of the vessel still
easy to read across the stern and on the sideboards (on
top of the roof). Salvagers have removed the wheel,
propeller and lights, but most of the historic artifacts
are still in place as they were the day this delightful
wreck sank in 1922.

The Dowell is one of my favorite wrecks in Lake
Washington, but the typical extremely low visibility of
the cold lake water and the unforgiving depth may not
make this dive everyone’s cup of team.